Jeeves, the poodle is very sick and Jeeve's owners have different ideas what to do about it. Blasto, Deborah de Bakker's prize winning story, was published in 2019 in Twenty Years of Snowshoes: Winning Stories from the Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop, edited by Rosalind Maki and Deborah de Bakker.
The book is a dynamite collection of good fiction featuring the best of our local writers. Blasto gives us familiar characters in a difficult situatiion.
Blasto
by Deborah de Bakker
When Shannon phoned Tom at work to report that Jeeves the poodle had blasto, Tom laughed. Blasto. It sounded like a new kind of music or recreational drug.
Tom was just back from an expense-account lunch with his branch manager, who commended him for the new clients he had brought into the firm. Over the summer, Tom had increased the portfolios he managed by two million dollars. He now wore the fine wool suits and custom-tailored shirts that marked a successful stock broker. Maybe he could trade in the Civic hatchback soon for something more upscale.
But it turned out that the dog’s blasto was no laughing matter. It also turned out to be Tom’s fault. Jeeves had picked up the infection in June, on their camping trip to Lake of the Woods. The trip was his idea; Shannon had never wanted to go, she pointed out.
He googled blasto. It was short for blastomycosis, a fungal infection prevalent in that part of Northwestern Ontario. The likely scenario was that the dog dug around in the dirt near the campsite and inhaled some spores, which were now wreaking havoc in his lungs and had probably already spread to other tissue. For the past week Jeeves had been coughing and gagging as if he had a hair ball stuck in his throat.
Tom sighed. Jeeves was Shannon’s dog, a black standard poodle, not the kind of dog he would get if he wanted one, which at this point he didn’t. It bothered him to leave a dog alone in the basement all day.
When Tom got home, Shannon said, “He throws up everything I give him, including the pills the vet ordered. You should see the x-ray of his lungs. It’s like a snowstorm in there.” When Tom crouched down to pet Jeeves, he felt a pus-filled lump on the dog’s flank.
As September passed, Jeeves’ cough seemed to improve. Shannon took him outside one day when Tom was raking. She threw a ball, just a gentle toss. Jeeves jogged towards the ball, then slowed to a walk and started limping. Finally, he sniffed the ball but didn’t pick it up. Without a word, Shannon took him back inside.
***
When it came time for the October appointment with the vet, Shannon insisted that Tom come along, so he would realize the ongoing seriousness of the illness and why the anti-fungal treatment was critical, even if it was expensive.
“So, how expensive is it?” he asked her.
“Oh, maybe $500 a month.”
Oh my God. “Plus the vet’s fees?”
“I guess.”
Jeeves struggled to jump up into the hatchback, and they drove across town to the clinic.
The vet had a starched lab coat, a neat pony tail and hound-dog eyes.
He examined Jeeves. The dog’s right eye was a little cloudy; there was an abscess in his ear that yielded pus under pressure; there was a sore on his bottom lip and two lesions on his feet.
“A lot of people whose pets are in this situation simply have them…euthanized,” he said, looking at Shannon, shaking his head sadly. Surely she wasn’t that kind of pet owner, his look said.
“Hey, that might be for the best,” Tom interjected. “You know, he’s suffering—”
“But with a lot of TLC,” the vet butted in, “and a few more months of the antifungals, Jeeves here has a fighting chance.”
“How good a chance?” Tom asked, raising his voice a little.
“Well, at this point probably less than fifty per cent,” the vet said, gently stroking Jeeves’s skinny neck, avoiding a puss-y lump.
What a phony, Tom thought, up-selling treatment for a dying dog. Why can’t Shannon see it? Maybe she thinks the vet is flirting with her. For the moment Tom held his tongue, and they left with another month’s supply of pills paid for on his MasterCard.
Out in the parking lot, Tom boosted Jeeves into the hatchback, first his front legs, and then his back.
“You know, that vet is gay,” he said.
“You think every good-looking man is gay.”
“Who says he’s good looking?”
“What are you, jealous?”
“Phhh!”
***
Tom knew Shannon was attached to the dog, but it was a dog, and she seemed to have lost touch with that fact. They had been married fifteen years, mostly good, but recently they hardly talked. For the first time, he had a job he liked, as a stockbroker. He was doing well, considering the recession, but it didn’t seem to please her. She hated her own job at Thunder Bay Hydro—taking calls from cranky customers who had already been on hold for half an hour, distilling their frustrations into rage that spewed forth as soon as Shannon said Hello, how may I help you? The place was understaffed and the office politics were brutal, but she still dragged herself in every day. Tom encouraged her to take some upgrading and apply for other jobs, but the thought of university classes and interviews terrified her.
Tom hadn’t been unfaithful to Shannon, but he couldn’t help noticing the women he worked with, who spent their money on pretty dresses and gym memberships, not on dogs. He wished he didn’t notice Shannon’s sags and sighs, but he did.
***
By late November, Jeeves was weak and listless. He had lost twenty pounds and most of his hair. He rarely got out of his dog bed, which was now in the living room, and he spent the day hacking and wheezing, occasionally thumping his tail when Shannon approached. She couldn’t get him to eat. She went on stress leave and hovered over him all day. She forced pureed meat down his throat using a syringe. Tom couldn’t stand to watch.
Maybe things would have been better if she had a baby, he thought. When they got married, he hoped for a child. After a few years with no pregnancy, he suggested they go for a fertility consultation. She demurred, saying it was too personal. She would have a baby if one came, but she didn’t want to discuss it with strangers. Eventually, he went to a doctor on his own and had his sperm count and motility checked. Both were normal. When he told Shannon, she yelled, “How could you do that behind my back?” and slammed out of the house.
One evening, as he tried to read and Jeeves moaned, Tom said, “You know, Shannon, if I were in Jeeves’s condition, I think I’d prefer to be euthanized.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” she replied. But instead of laughing, as she once would have, she started crying. Tom drove off in the Civic and sat in a sports bar until the Leafs game was over, and Shannon was asleep.
***
On the twenty-third of December, Shannon called Tom in the middle of his office Christmas party.
“We’ve got to take Jeeves to the vet.”
“What?” he said, poking his left ear closed with his index finger to cut the background noise.
“The vet. We’ve got to go. Now.”
“Is the vet even open?”
“I phoned him—he said he’d stay until we got there.”
“Ohhhh-kay.”
Tom sighed and drained his glass in one swallow. It was his third scotch, but he felt fine to drive.
On the way home, the road was slick, and thick snow was blowing. He had to keep the defrost on high. Traffic was heavy and moving slowly. Lots of offices were shutting down early for the Christmas break, and people were heading to the mall for last-minute shopping.
By the time Tom got home, Jeeves was barely breathing. They bundled him into a blanket and carried him to the car. Although he’d lost a lot of weight, he still weighed a droopy fifty-five pounds.
The cars crawled along the road, drivers hunched over their steering wheels, trying to get a better view through the snow. Those who hit the accelerator or brakes too hard slid drunkenly. Tom started to give other cars a wide berth.
Back in the hatch, the dog was too weak to get up or even to resist the momentum when Tom braked or turned a corner. Jeeves slid around like a case of beer. And he smelled foul.
Tom opened his window a crack to let in some cold wind. He thought about the Christmas party, his boss in a Santa suit, face glowing, and the women smelling of freesia and sandalwood, wearing shiny cocktail dresses even though it was still afternoon.
By now it was dark. Tom pictured the vet standing alone at the only window at the clinic that was still lit, looking out, waiting for them.
He approached the corner of Third Street and Monterey, just in time to make the light, when for no reason at all, the car in front of him braked. The light had only been orange for a millisecond. Any normal person, even a normal little old person would have continued through that intersection, but this lady decided to stop.
The hatchback slid and hit her hard, pushing her car well into the intersection. Damn.
The airbags in the hatchback deployed, thumping Tom and Shannon in the chest and face. Jeeves slammed into the seat back.
“What have you done?” Shannon cried, rubbing her cheeks as the bags crumpled, almost as fast as they’d inflated. She opened the door to go to check Jeeves. Tom got out, blinked, and went to see how bad the accident had been. The trunk of the car he hit had collapsed into the back seat. Fortunately, there were no passengers.
He tapped on the driver’s side window and the old woman at the wheel opened it. “You okay, ma’am?”
“Yes…I think so…what happened?”
“There was an accident. My car slid into the back of yours.”
“Ohhhhh!” she said, smiling as if that explained everything. “I’m Mrs. Schofield.”
“Stay where you are please, Mrs. Schofield. We’ll wait for the police. Is there anyone I can phone for you?”
“Allen, my son Allen. What’s his cell phone number? Ohhhhh. It’s in my purse here somewhere.”
His mind raced. What to do? All his fault, again. Nothing he could do.
A police cruiser arrived. Allen arrived. Together Allen and the officer managed to get the door open and help old Mrs. Schofield out.
She took Allen’s arm and walked gingerly over to Allen’s car, parked across the way. She didn’t want an ambulance. The police officer would come over later and take a statement from her. Someone called a wrecker.
The cop stepped in close to Tom and asked what happened, reviewing his license and insurance card as Tom tried to explain.
“Have you had anything to drink today, sir?”
“Well, I had a couple of drinks at our office party, before my wife called me about the emergency with the dog.”
“Uh-huh…a dog emergency.” The cop looked doubtful. He retrieved a roadside breathalyser machine and told Tom to blow. It read .06. “I’m suspending your license for twelve hours. You’ll have to get a ride home.”
Shannon came over to see what was going on. She was trembling and breathing quickly. “Could you speed things up?”
In unison, Tom and the cop turned and told her to get back into the car.
The officer got into the cruiser and radioed in the accident information, leaving Tom shivering at the side of the road. The wrecker arrived, and pulled Mrs Schofield’s car out of the intersection.
The officer went over to speak to Mrs. Schofield and after a few minutes waved her and her son off.
Finally the cop came back to Tom. He was a young kid, no doubt just out of Police College, full of black-and-white notions of the world. He looked Tom right in the eye. “You know, in this situation, I might just have charged you with following too close. But because you’ve been drinking, I’m bumping it up to careless driving.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Following too close gets you four points. Careless gets you six, and a bigger fine.”
“Please, officer, I’ve already got three points on a speeding charge. If I get six more, I could lose my license.
“Should have thought of that.”
He was writing up the ticket, lips pursed, when Shannon came back, shaking. “Jeeves is dead.” She spit the words out towards both of them. “I’m calling a cab to get to the vet.”
Tom looked helplessly at the police officer, and back at Shannon. “What for? If he’s dead...Why don’t we just take him home now and deal with it in the morning? Sweetheart?”
Shannon turned away and pulled out her phone to make the call.
“Okay, then I’ll come with you,” Tom said.
“Bugger off,” she said, without turning around.
Shannon waited for the taxi on the curb some distance away, elbows folded, rubbing her upper arms, glaring at several onlookers. When the cab arrived, the driver did not look pleased about transporting a dead poodle, but after some discussion, he loaded Jeeves into the trunk, staggering under the weight. Tom watched the cab move off and merge into Christmas traffic. For the first time he noticed that his chest, shoulders and knees were aching.
The wrecker returned, its glowing red light going round and round. With Jeeves out of the way, the driver hoisted the front end of the hatchback and lurched away into the storm.
The officer handed Tom the ticket and without another word, got in the cruiser and left.
Now Tom stood alone on the side of the road. After so much commotion, Shannon, the dog and the car were gone. With everything cleaned up, people passing now would never realize that anything had happened. The whole incident was already in the past, swallowed up by the night.
Tom ordered a cab for himself.
As he climbed into it, he suddenly felt a little giddy, as if a weight he was carrying suddenly dissolved. He gave the driver the address of one of his friends, who was having a Christmas party. He wanted to see some happy faces, hear some music, drink a cup of eggnog. Tom remembered that one of his clients was a defence lawyer. He could fight the careless charge. And as soon as Christmas was over, he’d go and buy a better car, maybe a luxury sedan. The old hatchback was not worth fixing.
.JPG)
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